Paul Moore Jr., the retired Episcopal bishop of New York who for more than a decade was the most formidable liberal Christian voice in the city, died yesterday at home in Greenwich Village. He was 83.

In recent months, the bishop had said that he was suffering from lung and brain cancer.

Bishop Moore spoke out against corporate greed, racism, military spending and for more assistance to the nation's poor, pursuing his political and social agenda in both the city and within the national Episcopal denomination. He was an early advocate of women's ordination and, in 1977, was the first Episcopal bishop to ordain a gay woman as an Episcopal priest.

Serving from 1972 to 1989, he was the 13th Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, which today covers about 65,000 Episcopalians in 203 congregations in Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and the counties of Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster.

The numbers are small compared with the more influential Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which covers roughly the same geographical territory. But the Episcopal church -- part of the worldwide Anglican tradition -- had long been one of the city's most visible denominations, in part because of its massive gothic cathedral in Upper Manhattan and because the church had traditionally been the home to some of the city's most prominent families, among them the Astors, DuPonts, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Mellons and Roosevelts.

During his tenure, Bishop Moore transformed the seat of the diocese, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, at 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, from a moribund backwater church to a place where peacocks roamed, orchestras performed, elephants lumbered, inner city youth found jobs and the homeless slept in supervised shelters.

He opened the cathedral for rallies against racism and on behalf of nuclear disarmament. Some of his critics asserted that the bishop had used the church for political purposes, but Bishop Moore said that religion and progressive social policies were inexorably linked.

Bishop Moore argued for his agenda in the most Christian of terms, refusing to cede Biblical language to the Christian right. Although he retired as bishop in 1989, he continued to speak out, taking to the pulpit of his former church as recently as March 24, even as illness overtook him, to protest the war in Iraq.

''It appears we have two types of religion here,'' the bishop said, aiming his sharpest barbs at President Bush. ''One is a solitary Texas politician who says, 'I talk to Jesus, and I am right.' The other involves millions of people of all faiths who disagree.''

He added: ''I think it is terrifying. I believe it will lead to a terrible crack in the whole culture as we have come to know it.''

Bishop Moore was unrepentant in his liberalism, even as many others, and the city as a whole, moved increasingly to the right in the 1980's. For example, he gave the invocation at the swearing-in ceremony for his friend Edward I. Koch as mayor in 1978 but within a short time was sparring with the mayor over the issue of housing.

Mr. Koch accused the bishop of being a ''knee-jerk liberal''; Bishop Moore called the mayor's ideas about homelessness ''naïve and dangerous.''

Bishop Moore also clashed with Cardinal John J. O'Connor, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, over the issue of legal protection for homosexuals. In time, Cardinal O'Connor overshadowed Bishop Moore as the city's most outspoken Christian voice, though one that was far more conservative.

In 1986, Cardinal O'Connor opposed the city's gay rights legislation, which was adopted later that year.

Bishop Moore, however, said that it was ''morally wrong'' to be against equal rights for all citizens.

Bishop Moore later acknowledged that his rhetoric was strong, but added, ''In this city you have to speak strongly to be heard.''

Probably the most well-known example of Bishop Moore's proclivity to speak strongly came a decade earlier, in 1976, at the height of the city's fiscal crisis, when New York was staring at bankruptcy. In a fiery sermon from the pulpit of St. John the Divine on Easter Sunday that year, the bishop accused corporations that were abandoning the city of ''betrayal,'' saying that they were perpetuating a cycle of unemployment, crime and economic decline. He likened them to ''rats leaving a sinking ship.''

''Look over your city and weep, for your city is dying,'' he said, echoing the biblical prophet Jeremiah. ''In sections of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem, great hulks of buildings stand abandoned and burned.''

''We of the religious community will not stand by as this betrayal of the city takes place,'' he added to a congregation that included some of the city's captains of industry.

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He laid down this charge: ''Cut through the fog of statistics and see the moral decisions behind them. Be part of the rising, not the dying!''

While he became synonymous with liberal political views, Bishop Moore was a traditionalist when it came to church liturgy, representing those members of the Episcopal church who highly value the sacraments, above all the Lord's Supper.

''The Eucharist was at the very center of Paul's spirituality,'' said Dr. R. William Franklin, a friend of Bishop Moore's who now serves as the scholar in residence at St. John the Divine. ''He loved the very ritualistic celebration of the Eucharist because it gave a sense of God's healing and liberating presence in the world. He made the liberating vision a political reality. It was something that people around him could touch.''

Bishop Moore was married in 1944 to Jenny McKean, with whom he had nine children. She died in 1973. In 1975, Bishop Moore married Brenda Hughes, who died in 1999. He is survived by his children, Honor of Manhattan; Paul of Berkeley, Calif.; Adelia of Hartford; Rosemary of Brooklyn; George of Oaxaca, Mexico; Marian of Minneapolis; Daniel of Los Angeles; Susanna of Berkeley, Calif.; and Patience of Nashville; and 19 grandchildren.

Paul Moore's early life does not immediately suggest an affinity for the kinds of social issues that he would later champion. He was born on Nov. 15, 1919, in Morristown, N.J., to a family of wealth and prominence. His grandfather was one of the founders of Bankers Trust. His father was a good friend of Senator Prescott Bush, whose son, George H. W. Bush, and grandson, George W. Bush, would become United States presidents.

Paul Moore spent winters in Palm Beach, Fla., and summers on the Massachusetts shore. He once told an interviewer that he was virtually unaware of poverty until the family's chauffeured limousine passed bread lines during the Great Depression. His reaction, he recalled, was to hide on the floor of the limousine in shame.

He attended the St. Paul's prep school in Concord, N.H., then went to Yale. During World War II, while serving as Marine captain, he was seriously wounded on Guadalcanal by a bullet that narrowly missed his heart. For his service, he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He was discharged in 1945 and entered General Theological Seminary in New York to study for the ministry. He was ordained in 1949.

Standing 6 feet 4 -- something of a human rallying pole -- he became the consummate urban priest. His first parish was Grace Church Van Vorst in a run-down section of Jersey City. ''We brought landlords to court,'' he recalled in an interview. ''We integrated public housing. We made a lot of speeches and we held a lot of street demonstrations. We collected petitions against police brutality and did other stuff that wasn't so common in those days.''

From Jersey City, he become dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis, where he served from 1957 to 1964. He was then appointed a bishop and served the Washington diocese. In his years in Washington, he picketed the White House, lectured Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on the importance of protecting civil rights marchers in the South and organized a rock festival at the National Cathedral.

In 1970 he came to New York, serving first as suffragan bishop and, in 1972, as the diocese's bishop. One of his first appointments as bishop was to name the Rev. James Parks Morton as dean of St. John the Divine.

Together, the bishop and the dean went about the business of reviving the Episcopal cathedral, opening the 13-acre campus in Morningside Heights to different cultures, races, religions and the arts.

Worship at the cathedral, while at the core an Episcopal Mass, would sometimes incorporate Zen Buddhist meditations, African chants and Jewish klezmer music. Speakers from across the religious spectrum came there, from the Dalai Lama to the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer, the liberal Jewish leader who died in 1993.

The cathedral became the home to liturgical dance companies, a homeless shelter, a biblical garden -- complete with free-roaming peacocks -- and, for a time, the Big Apple Circus. For the cathedral's 100th anniversary, in 1986, Philippe Petit, the French aerialist, was named the artist in residence, and he performed high above the stone floor at the celebration.

Perhaps Bishop Moore's most dramatic decision was to resume building on the cathedral, which had ceased during World War II, when iron and steel were scarce because of the needs of the armed forces. He hired a master stonemason from England to train young residents of Morningside Heights, Harlem and Newark to work on finishing the cathedral.

Construction started in 1982 on an ambitious project that addressed many of the issues close to the bishop's heart -- employment, equal opportunity and job training -- but it was halted a few years later when financing ran out. The cathedral remains unfinished.

Some felt that Bishop Moore overreached in his stewardship of St. John the Divine, but he made no apologies.

''There are two historical images of the cathedral,'' he once said. ''The English Cathedral is a thing of great beauty set apart on a hillside. You go there for quiet and peace and to withdraw from the world. The other image is the Italian or French model, where the cathedral is right smack bam in the middle of the city, with all its life and dirt and struggle. Ours combines both. We are a medieval cathedral for New York City.''

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A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on May 2, 2003, on Page C00011 of the National edition with the headline: Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore Jr., 83, Dies; Strong Voice on Social and Political Issues. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe